In a bid to flesh out its software storage management offerings, market-leading US storage vendor EMC Corp yesterday acquired Softworks Inc in a cash transaction worth approximately $192m.
Under the terms of the deal, EMC will pay shareholders of Alexandria, Virginia-based Softworks $10 per share through a cash tender offer set to begin no later than December 28. The deal has been approved by both companies’ boards and is subject to various conditions and regulatory approvals. Shareholders controlling 42% of Softworks’ stock have agreed to tender their shares in favor of the offer. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2000.
According to Dave Farmer, a spokesperson for EMC, Softworks’ products will fill a vital gap in EMC’s storage management portfolio. At the moment, EMC only has software to monitor and manage the physical storage environment, while Softworks’ products will enable EMC to manage the logic environment too.
Softworks’ specializes in storage resource management. While EMC’s software – branded under the name ControlCenter – can provide information on how the hardware is performing and how the boxes are partitioned, Softworks’ products work at a deeper level, managing how the storage is being used as well as providing details about how much it is used and by whom.
This provides us with another level of functionality in storage management, Farmer told ComputerWire. We already have a range of products that manage data on our Symmetrix [EMC’s flagship storage line] product, but Softworks offers us the ability to manage the storage of individual files, databases and folders.
Softworks’ products offer support for storage devices attached to Windows NT, OS/390, MVS, HP-UX, AIX and Solaris. According to a spokesperson for the company, Softworks 2000 customers include around 87% of the Fortune 100 and at least 50% of the Fortune 500, a very large number of whom are joint EMC/Softworks customers, he said.
The two companies have already enjoyed a three-year joint development deal but, according to Farmer, EMC wanted to buy Softworks to get its hands on its strong development team with an eye toward boosting its efforts in the area of resource management. It also helps EMC from the time-to-market perspective, he said. It’s much faster, product-wise, to buy Softworks than if we decided to develop it ourselves.
Farmer said the majority of Softworks’ 270 employees would transfer over to EMC, although he added that it was likely there would be some overlap in certain areas, but refused to give any specific details. He was similarly tight-lipped about future integration plans, adding that is was too premature, to make any announcements. He said the company would effectively continue to operate as a separate entity and would report to EMC’s headquarters in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
